{"id":11412,"date":"2018-12-23T21:40:17","date_gmt":"2018-12-23T21:40:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/?p=11412"},"modified":"2018-12-24T16:32:02","modified_gmt":"2018-12-24T16:32:02","slug":"news-brave-browsers-opt-out-fundraising-fallout-from-the-bitcoin-and-ether-price-crash-uk-tax-guidance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2018\/12\/23\/news-brave-browsers-opt-out-fundraising-fallout-from-the-bitcoin-and-ether-price-crash-uk-tax-guidance\/","title":{"rendered":"News: Brave browser’s opt-out “fundraising” for third parties, fallout from the Bitcoin and Ether price crash, Tether margin trading, UK tax guidance"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Brave web browser is a favourite of crypto fans, because it has a crypto in it \u2014 the Basic Attention Token (BAT) ERC-20<\/a> token. It appears the browser renders YouTube data to look like you can donate to a YouTube channel … even if they’re not signed up for BAT at all. This exploded on Twitter on Friday, when a viewer asked<\/a> British YouTuber Tom Scott<\/a> if he was getting his BAT donations \u2014 and Tom was not pleased in the slightest<\/a> with Brave’s claim to represent him,<\/a> when they didn’t in any way at all.<\/p>\n

Brave have apparently released an updated version<\/a> of the browser with new wording\u00a0\u2014 which still doesn’t really make it clear that the supposed recipient\u00a0never signed up for this and has nothing to do with it<\/em> \u2014 and they’ll keep defaulting<\/a> to taking “donations” on behalf of people who haven’t signed up at all.<\/a> Amy Castor has a story coming on all of this in The Block<\/a> shortly. edit:<\/strong> story is up now.<\/a><\/p>\n

(And the image in this post<\/a> from last November suggests you can donate to Wikipedia this way. Wikimedia legal don’t tolerate this sort of fundraising fraud for a second.)<\/p>\n

Jackson Palmer details how, even when you do sign up with Brave\/BAT as a publisher, the system is hilariously terrible<\/a> and utterly, utterly centralised.<\/p>\n

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https:\/\/twitter.com\/ummjackson\/status\/1076219501580931072<\/p>\n

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Sky News covers the retail investors and small businesses<\/a> who got burnt by the Bitcoin price crash.<\/p>\n

But the institutional investors will save the Bitcoin price! … oh.<\/a> “Participation by financial institutions in Bitcoin trading appears to be fading. Key flow metrics have downshifted dramatically.” The CME and CBOE Bitcoin futures are losing interest. The investment banks built crypto products\u00a0\u2014 but the investors haven’t shown up.<\/a><\/p>\n

How hard are the Bitcoin price pumpers<\/a> pushing the price? 20 December 2018 was Bitcoin’s single highest trading volume day<\/a> in its entire history.<\/p>\n

World’s luckiest Bitcoin margin trader \u2014 Mark Dow shorted Bitcoin at the peak, and cashed out at the bottom.<\/a> “I\u2019m done … I don\u2019t want to try to squeeze more out of the lemon.” Here’s his blog post<\/a> shortly before he opened his position \u2014 there’s no details on where and how he set up the short.<\/p>\n

NUMBER GO UP,<\/strong> December 2017\u00a0\u2014 Meltem Demirors sees<\/a> a “much bigger run coming in 2018 when more products and more instruments come to market.”
\nNUMBER GO DOWN,<\/strong> December 2018\u00a0\u2014 actually it’s about the technology,<\/a> OK,<\/p>\n

Tether is supposed to be pegged to the US Dollar. Who would introduce margin trading on such a stablecoin? Bitfinex, the people who issue it!<\/a><\/p>\n

The Hong Kong Stock Exchange is reluctant to approve the Bitmain IPO<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 “The exchange is very hesitant to actually approve these bitcoin mining companies because the industry is so volatile. There\u2019s a real risk that they could just not exist any more in a year or two.”<\/p>\n

NiceHash competitor WinMiner\u00a0\u2014 a miner for casual users, which shuffled between coins for you, according to which was most profitable to mine that day\u00a0\u2014 has gone into “hibernation”<\/a> as so many home miners give up.<\/p>\n

How’s Bitcoin mining going? Nicholas Weaver posts<\/a> this graph \u2014 when half the peak mining capacity is “dark”, that dark capacity can be used to launch 51% attacks, if that’s more profitable.<\/p>\n

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https:\/\/twitter.com\/ncweaver\/status\/1074654413833170946<\/p>\n

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The new White House Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney, appears to be a hodler.<\/a> Speaking to the far-right John Birch Society<\/a> in 2016, he praised Bitcoin as \u201cnot manipulatable by any government.\u201d The John Birch Society were some of the early propagators of the gold-bug ideology that led to Bitcoin, as I covered<\/a> in Chapter 2<\/a> of Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

HMRC has issued UK tax guidance<\/a> on how to account for your crypto earnings. “HMRC does not consider the buying and selling of cryptoassets to be the same as gambling” \u2014 that is, unlike with gambling, your winnings are taxable and you can claim your losses.<\/p>\n

Thomas Roth will be giving a talk at 35C3<\/a> on hacking hardware wallets. Finally, a use case for crypto!<\/a><\/p>\n

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Want to learn how we got snake running on the Ledger Nano S hardware wallet? Come to our (@nedos<\/a>, @cryptotx<\/a> and me) https:\/\/t.co\/ig09vBWwGC<\/a> talk at #35c3<\/a>. https:\/\/t.co\/EiVhhZfn7B<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/1wqOordu7e<\/a><\/p>\n

— Thomas Roth (@StackSmashing) December 22, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n